EBay announced it will launch a program to promote its top rated sellers this October. The e-commerce giant is planning the launch to coincide with the upcoming holiday shopping season.
EBay sellers who deliver the highest level of customer service, as rated by buyers, will be promoted with a special “eBay Top-Rated Seller” badge, receive 20% discounts on their final value fees, and be elevated in search, eBay said. Buyers will be able to more easily identify sellers that consistently deliver the highest level of customer satisfaction.
EBay said it plans to immediately qualify 150,000 eBay Top-Rated Sellers in the US when the program goes live. Programs will launch in the United Kingdom and Germany in October as well. These highest-rated sellers will display an eBay Top-Rated Seller badge on the “view item page” that displays their listing. Going forward, any seller with as few as 100 transactions a year and $3,000 annual in sales volume can qualify for the designation. eBay said the Top-Rated Seller status is based on further refinements to eBay’s feedback system.
“It’s a departure for us,” said Usher Lieberman, senior manager of corporate communications. “It’s not based on volume. We’re favoring quality sellers. We’ve lowered the transactions to 100 per year, and that level is attainable for pretty much all sellers. When the program kicks off in October, there will be 86,000 sellers who previously didn’t quality as power sellers.”
EBay announced additional initiatives designed to benefit sellers including an enhanced search visibility tool to provide more transparency on placement in search results, a streamlined resolution process for unpaid item claims, new bulk editing tools, and an update to its seller dashboard.
